Defending champion and British No 1 needed just an hour and 24 minutes to
defeat his Slovenian opponent making SW19 debut

Andy Murray achieved his most emphatic grand slam victory for seven years yesterday as his 6-1, 6-1, 6-0 bulldozing of Slovenian qualifier Blaz Rola propelled him into the third round of Wimbledon with a hugely impressive flourish.

Given the shock defeat last night of Spain’s David Ferrer, the next highest seed in Murray’s quarter of the draw, the Scot’s dominant exhibition kindled hopes that his partnership with new coach Amelie Mauresmo could yield a successful defence of his title in 10 days’ time.

Should we call this fearsome trouncing of Rola the Mauresmo effect? Murray never registered such a brutal scoreline under the tutelage of Ivan Lendl, and in only his fourth match mentored by the Frenchwoman he claimed the most one-sided result of his Wimbledon career.

Only once, when he shipped just one game to Alberto Martin at the 2007 Australian Open, has Murray ever beaten an opponent more savagely in the slams. So consummate was his performance that the Duchess of Cornwall even left her place in Centre Court’s royal box to watch the demolition job taking place on Court No 1.

Thus far in this Wimbledon fortnight Murray has given auspicious signs of having picked up precisely where he finished last summer, extending his grasscourt record to 27 wins from his past 30 matches, the finest record among any of his rivals for the Challenge Cup. A rare switch to the boondocks of the All England Club’s second showcourt could not stall his progress, as he dispensed with Rola before most of the debenture-holders had polished off their lunchtime strawberries.

At times the crowd had difficulty finding ways to motivate Murray, so total was his superiority. The few stray cries of “C’mon Andy!” were reserved for those isolated occasions when he dared to lose a point. Rola had acknowledged that he might be apprehensive for this match, and so it proved as he received a chastening lesson lasting all of one hour and 24 minutes.

Two of the three points he faced were snuffed out with an ace, and otherwise his timing across every department of his armoury, from groundstrokes to lobs to the deftest drop-shots, was exquisite.

Rola might have dared imagine the contest could be closer when he held serve in the third game, but nine games would flash by before he won another.

“I played well,” Murray reflected. “This is the first year that Blaz has played on grass. He has just come out of college and broken into the top 100, so it was tough for him, because he doesn’t have a lot of grasscourt experience.”

He acknowledged that “Amelie would be pleased” with the speed of his afternoon’s work as he seeks to conserve energy for a third-round encounter with 27th seed Roberto Bautista Agut, who this month won the grasscourt tournament in 's-Hertogenbosch, Holland.

Bautista Agut, who sealed his spot in the last 32 with a convincing four-set dispatch of the Czech Republic’s Jan Hernych, suggested he would be far from cowed by the prospect of playing a two-time slam winner. “I’m not scared,” he said. “I am winning a lot of matches, and I will try to be aggressive, to play my game.”

While Murray had been scheduled to meet Ferrer in the quarter-finals, the path to a likely last-four encounter with Novak Djokovic opened up enticingly yesterday as the seventh seed was beaten in five sets by Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov, the world No 118. The tests are guaranteed to grow more arduous, however, than the one he confronted here against poor Rola.

It had been optimistic to expect that the Slovenian would detain Murray for long, given that he had been knocked out by Britain’s James Ward in French Open qualifying and had only ever won a single match on grass, in the first round here against Pablo Andújar. One wondered at how poor that opponent must have been on the Wimbledon lawns, so mercilessly was the 23-year-old dismantled here.

Murray signalled his intentions from the outset in racking up his ninth straight Wimbledon win, seizing upon a Rola double-fault with a sumptuous backhand winner to break serve after just three minutes. The crispest of forehand passing shots enabled him to move 4-1 ahead, and a triple break swiftly followed as he took care of the opening set in under half an hour.

He was finding a higher gear than at any point during his earlier vanquishing of David Goffin, giving a peerless demonstration of all facets of his play. Still, the limitations of Rola, seeking back-to-back wins for the first time after joining the tour on a full-time basis only last year, were painfully evident.

Murray has developed a renowned proficiency against left-handers, Rafael Nadal excepted, as a consequence of growing up playing with southpaw brother Jamie, and he exploited that advantage to the full over the next two sets with a crushing destruction of Rola, who won a mere 16 per cent of points on second serve.

Gratifyingly, he kept his powder dry for the greater challenges ahead. The ever-pragmatic Murray might remain focused solely upon his next engagement with Bautista Agut but on this evidence, his legions of disciples here can dare to start looking beyond.